Cost of Manchester's Lord Mayor revealed

Expenses and allowances for the city's Lord Mayor in detail

Photograph: Christopher Thomond

The role of Manchester's Lord Mayor has cost the city almost £900,000 over the past five years.

According to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) the previously unpublished costs for everything from hospitality to petrol for the official car totalled £877,249 between 2005 and 2010.

"The Lord Mayor's Office organises the Lord Mayor's diary of engagements, providing necessary research and briefings. The office is also responsible for the organisation and delivery of civic events.An attendant accompanies the Lord Mayor on all official engagements, acts as chauffeur and on appropriate occasions as Macebearer and Toastmaster."

Some of the spending revealed in the data;* The last Lord Mayor's allowance of £23,387 is higher than the Manchester average wage for a permanent job, as calculated by the Payscale website .* The cost of petrol expenditure almost doubled during the time period from £710 in 2005 to £1,329 in the last financial year.* In addition to using the official car (currently a leased Volvo S80 DS) the mayors spent a total of £9,344 on hire cars. The accompanying notes (see below) explain that hire cars are sometimes used for the deputy mayor.* Mayors spent more than £5,000 in total on hospitality nibbles and refreshments but that figure doesn't include the major ceremonial events such as Remembrance Sunday of Civic Sunday for which no costs were revealed.

ManchesterMayor

Lord Mayor

Mohammed Afzal Khan and Councillor James Ashley (due to death).

David Sandiford

Glynn Evans

Mavis Smitheman

Alison Firth

Click on heading to sort

Political party

Liberal Democrat

Liberal Democrat

Labour

Labour

Liberal Democrat

Payment details

2005/6 (£)

2006/7 (£)

2007/8 (£)

2008/9 (£)

2009/10 (£)

The extra allowance that the councillor fulfilling the role of

21,250

18,340

22,370

22,873

23,387

Lord Mayor receives.

The cost of all staff who work in the Lord Mayor's office.

125,041

132,431

137,831

139,661

158,090

The cost of the council official cars used to transport the Lord Mayor

Leasing

8,172

8,172

8,172

8,532

8,532

Petrol

710

820

813

1,102

1,329

Expenses for food for the Lord Mayor and food and hospitality for guests.

1,040

890

1,190

1,013

877

Expenses for travel within the UK

Taxis

63

464

85

394

767

Train

0

0

0

0

150

Misc and subsistence

290

167

254

137

168

Hire cars

269

1,392

2,217

2,687

2,779

Expenses for travel outside the UK but within the EU.

0

0

0

0

252

Expenses for travel outside the EU.

5,662

n/a

68

3,590

n/a

Cost of official photographs.

515

529

547

550

615

Totals

Last year I also looked at the costs of the Lord Mayor for Leeds Council.

Those figures can be found here and show significantly higher expenditure with a total over the past five years of almost £1.6m. However, the figures are not a like-for-like comparison as Manchester did not declare some expenses such as the calculated office costs and doesn't host a mayor's ball.The full response to the FoI request can be seen here.